Democrats are battling to see who is the most radically left

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01/13/2019

Another week, another feverish contest among Democrats to see who can drag the party faster and farther to the left. The new year is beginning with a blistering pace, with wild and crazy ideas popping up across the country.

Start in Washington, where Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi made a lasting impression by saying no, no to President Trump’s sensible proposal for barriers and other security at the southern border. Their rejection, and implicit denial that there is even a problem, serves as an invitation to hundreds of thousands of more migrants to cross illegally. And each new wave guarantees that future Dems will be able to demand amnesty for successive generations of “Dreamers,” thus roiling America for years.

Heckuva job, Chuck and Nancy. You should start a podcast, where you each get your own podium.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, already the left’s congressional rookie of the year, added to her appeal by making a push to tax the richest Americans at 70 percent of their income. She also continues to campaign for a Green New Deal, a set of ideas so big — and vague — that a Vox writer said it aims to do nothing less than “decarbonize the economy and make it fairer and more just.”

Wow — it’s hard to be more of a purist than that.

Meanwhile, new California Gov. Gavin Newsom signaled his virtue by promising his state would be a “sanctuary to all who seek it.” He also expanded free health care for illegal immigrants, apparently hoping to attract more of them. Bravo!

The competition, then, was stiff — until New York City Mayor de Blasio blew them all away. He wins first prize by vowing womb-to-tomb handouts and a permanent push for more free stuff.

Appearing well-rested from months of doing nothing, de Blasio lapped the competition with three days of come-and-get-it giveaways. First he vowed free health care for 600,000 New Yorkers, half of them here illegally. Next came a plan to force private employers to give nearly all workers 10 paid vacation days a year.

Then, in his State of the City speech, de Blasio secured victory by making even more promises, such as seizing private apartment buildings from bad landlords, and laying out a vision for a city that would bury capitalism.

A red-diaper baby himself, the mayor declared a total class war: “Brothers and sisters, there’s plenty of money in the world. There’s plenty of money in this city. It’s just in the wrong hands.”

Heart be still!

There was also this grievance-stoking pander to the people: “You’re not living the life you ­deserve. And here is the cold, hard truth — it’s no accident. It’s an agenda. An agenda that’s dominated our politics from Reaganomics to the Trump tax giveaway to the wealthy and corporations.”

Finally, a tease about a glorious future in Havana-on-the-Hudson: “This country has spent decades taking from working people and giving to the 1 percent. This city has spent the last five years doing it the other way around. We give back to working people the prosperity they have earned. And we are just getting started.”

The only thing missing was a forced singalong to the socialist anthem, “The Internationale.”

In normal times, over-the-rainbow rhetoric could be dismissed as window dressing. But these days, Democrats, raging at Trump and emboldened by Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2016, are deadly serious about a hard left turn.

Even with the total collapse of Venezuela before their eyes and the undeniable horrors of life ­under communism and socialism, American leftists are no longer embarrassed to espouse ideologies that have failed miserably every place they’ve been tried.

In many ways, then, de Blasio is made for the moment. He and his equally radical wife, Chirlane McCray, spent their 1994 honeymoon sneaking into Cuba, in defiance of a US travel ban. Earlier, he had supported the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan communist group involved in a bitter civil war, with the American government on the other side.

Yet by the time he first ran for mayor in 2013, de Blasio had scrubbed all references to far-left activism from his Web site. He was just a progressive, eager to make deals with the real-estate industry, which in turn filled his slush funds with cash.

But now, as he starts Year 2 of his final term and his party resembles his past, he’s fully out of the closet. All that money “in the wrong hands” is a juicy target for an ­ambitious politician.

Unlike Schumer, Pelosi, Newsom and others who must prove their leftist street cred, de Blasio, like Ocasio-Cortez, can say “brothers and sisters” without sounding false. This is who he has always been, and now he doesn’t need to pretend he’s someone else.

To be clear, I don’t believe he has any chance of being president in 2020. He’s lazy, corrupt and incompetent, and New York is in obvious decline under his “leadership.” But that makes him all the more dangerous.

Having little power and no clear future, he has nothing to lose. He can be reckless with both his rhetoric and city finances because his main goal is influencing his national party’s tenor and direction.

And so, for one week at least, de Blasio takes the cake as the most radical Democrat in America. These days, that’s quite a feat.

Righting Mideast course

Once again, Barack Obama’s line that “elections have consequences” has been turned on its head, this time by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He used a trip to Cairo to draw a sharp contrast between Obama’s failed Mideast policies and those of President Trump.

Cairo is where Obama started his apology tours, and Pompeo mocked the former president’s efforts to woo Iran while being hostile or indifferent toward Egypt and other allies.

“We learned that when America retreats, chaos often follows,” Pompeo said. “When we neglect our friends, resentment builds. And when we partner with enemies, they advance.”

He added: “The good news is this: The age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering. Now comes the real new beginning.”

It’s a brilliant and important speech, one that accurately reflects America’s history as a force for good around the world. Pompeo also is blunt about Trump’s plan to get our allies to help share the burden in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.

Find the speech online. It’s a must-read.

The Dems’ real border agenda

Reader David Marshall concisely says what a lot of people believe. He writes: “Let’s face it. The real reason that Dems don’t want a wall is that the majority of people coming in will eventually become Democratic voters. They are trading our security and our laws for voters.”